UW Religion Today Column for week of April 22-28: Between Life and Death

April 19, 2012 — By Paul V.M. Flesher

Pop culture has two new icons. The first
are zombies who appear in books, graphic novels and films about the
(supposedly) coming zombie apocalypse (the Centers for Disease Control even
released a helpful bulletin) and in recast classic novels, such as "Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies." The second are vampires, which appear in the wildly
popular "Twilight" series of books and films, to say nothing of rewritten
novels like "Little Vampire Women."

Vampires and zombies are not new to English fiction.
Vampires have starred in stories since the early 1800s, while zombies began
appearing in the early 1900s. Popular interest in them should be seen -- along
with other fictional creatures -- such as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, created
by Mary Shelley in 1818; and golems, animated human-shaped beings made from
clay.

On one level, these four imaginary beings are just scary
creatures to build a story around. At another, they reveal our society's
fascination with life and death, particularly death.

All four of these creatures present ways the dead remain
alive. By writing stories and creating films about these beings, we use them to
explore the difference between life and death. Each one is an interstitial
figure that embodies elements of being alive and being dead. By putting these
states together in different ways, we can think about their meaning.

In the 1500s, golem stories had a heyday with Jewish rabbis
in Eastern Europe. Golems were created by pious rabbis, whose righteousness
gave them the power to create -- in imitation of God -- life.

In the most famous story, the Jews of Prague are threatened with
mass murder by an emperor. To prevent the slaughter, Rabbi Judah Loew creates a
golem out of clay (just as God created Adam out of dust), bringing it to life
with prayer and a holy word. When the golem goes beyond his orders and becomes
uncontrollably violent, Judah gives him the word for death, and the golem
stops.

In Shelley's story, Dr. Frankenstein created his nameless
creature, not from clay, but from parts taken from different bodies.
Frankenstein represents not piety, but the forefront of science, animating the
body with electricity rather than prayer. When the monster comes to life,
Frankenstein runs away in fear, leaving the monster to fend for itself. The
creature seeks out human contact but, when he tries to join in, his horrible
looks cause everyone to reject him. In emotional agony from this, the creature
turns on his maker.

The point is that human life needs society to thrive.
Without it, the excited emotions lead to violence, especially violence against
one's creator.

Frankenstein films add to Shelley's story by focusing on the
brain used in the creature; it is abnormal, often coming from a condemned
psychopath. This explains the creature's violence rather than his social
rejection.

Vampires begin with a whole human body, rather than parts.
They are technically dead, as is the most famous vampire, Count Dracula, of
Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. But rather than featuring human control of the
revivified being, vampire stories usually focus on the vampires' control of
living humans and their attempts to change them into undead vampires. Rather
than the living animating the dead, vampires are the dead bringing the living
to their state.

Vampires control their victims by drinking their blood.
Since the vampire "maker" possesses the victim's blood, they can guide their
actions. This differs from the control exercised by the rabbi over the golem
through the holy word or of the independence of Frankenstein's creature given
by his brain.

Zombies play with life and death in another direction. Early
20th-century zombies were animated corpses. As corpses, they were
decaying. They had no intelligence, brains or emotions, and existed by eating
human flesh.

Later films began to create zombies from living people,
whether through disease (usually escaped from a government laboratory),
radiation, demonic possession or aliens. Mindlessly driven by hunger, they ate
as their bodies continued to putrefy. They were infectious, walking slowly, but
spreading zombie contagion quickly. If the contagion reached far enough, the Zombie
Apocalypse would arrive and, along with it, the end of humanity.

The details of these four "alive-dead creatures" cannot be
pinned down because the stories continuously change them. While general
descriptions are clear, the details change as writers, actors and producers try
out different ideas to see how they affect the interplay between life and
death. This is what gives the stories
their power -- they enable us to explore what it means to be alive and to be
dead, by watching creatures who are both.